| The Golden Gate of Prayer |
Chapter 11 |
Page 5 |
There is a special suggestiveness in the word “our” — “Give us our bread first; it becomes ours through God’s gift to us. But there is something else also implied — the bread must be earned by us before it is properly ours. It is clearly taught in the Scriptures that every one must work for his own bread. This was the law of the unfallen state in Eden, and it is no less the law in the kingdom of redemption. Of course this does not apply to little children who are to young to work, to the old who are too feeble, or to the sick who are incapacitated for work — all such come under God’s special care and will not be forgotten. But all who are able to work must do so, or the bread they eat is not rightfully their own. “If any will not work,” says the Apostle Paul, “neither let him eat.”
The bread must be earned also in ways which have the divine approval. If a man steals his daily bread it is not his — he has robbed God and robbed his fellow-man, and there is a curse on what he eats. Money got in fraudulent transactions, or by any dishonest means, has not been righteously earned, and God’s blessing cannot be invoked upon it by any form of prayer. Imagine a gambler, for example, living on the fruits of his sin, asking God to give him, with a blessing, the bread on his table! Imaging a saloon-keeper, who has earned his bread by selling strong drink which have brought ruin upon lives and homes, asking God to bless his daily bread! God’s bread can become ours with a blessing only when it is earned in honest ways. While, therefore, we toil to earn our brad we must keep ourself unspotted form the world.
“I watched the sparrows flitting here and there,
In quest of food about the miry street:
Such nameless fare as seems to sparrows sweet
They sought with greedy clamor everywhere.
“Yet ‘mid their strife I noted with what care
They held upraised their fluttering pinions fleet.
They trod the mire with soiled and grimy feet,
But kept their wings unsullied in the air.
“I, too, like thee, O sparrow, toil to gain
My scanty portion from life’s sordid ways,
Like thee, too, often hungry, I am fain
To strive with greed and envy all my days.
Would that I, too, like thee, might learn the grace
To keep my soul’s uplifted wings from stain!”
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